PBA Galleries

Gelatin silver photograph by E. Willard Spurr, signed and dated by him in white ink at lower left along with his copyright notice, inscribed and signed by Albert Einstein in brown ink in lower right. 44.5x34.5 cm. (17½x13½"), framed under UV-protective plexiglass.

Fine, unusually large photograph portrait of the great physicist, inscribed by him in lower right: "To Mr. E.W. Spurr, Albert Einstein, 1931." Einstein was a visiting professor at the California Institute of Technology at the time; he would emigrate permanently to the United States in 1933. The photographer, Ervin Willard Spurr, was born in New York and grew up in Iowa, where he established his reputation as a photographer, before moving his studio to Pasadena. A portrait made at the same sitting as this one is in the Science Photo Library at the U.S. Library of Congress. The inscription by Einstein, in brown ink on the background of a brown coat, is a little faint.